EDEN PHILLPOTTB has given 118 in The American Prisoner, if
not a perfect work of art, at least a very exciting and interesting story, rendered additionally attractive by its scenery, setting, and mode of presentation generally. Let us say at once that one section of Mr. Eden Phillpotts's dramatis personae, his rustics, are as good company as any we have encountered in the works of living writers of fiction. Their talk, whether at work in the fields or at the ale-house, is per- fectly admirable in its elemental humour and racy turns of speech. Take, for example, the passage in which the searchers for the body of the American who escaped from the war prison on Dartmoor in a snow-storm discuss the situation :— "Richard Beer growled at the evil times and speculated where the farm field-walls might lie under this universal carpet. might so soon seek a storm-foundered sheep or steer as a man,' declared Putt. I'll be tissicked up wi' brownkitty again to-night, an' nobody to care a cuss whether my breathing be hard or easy.' —` Never seed any man wi' so poor a spirit as you,' answered Bickford. Once you get cold to the bone an' you haven't the pluck of a louse.'—' I'm a poor tool when I'm cold, an' I know it,' admitted Putt. Now us be all getting our death for nought. If there was a live party lost 'twould be diffeent--even though he was an enemy of the nation. But this here chap's been food For foxes these many days.'—' Twas a great sign of the love o' freedom said to be born in 'em, that they Yankees would rather take to the open on such a night than bide any more pent in that den of Frenchmen and prison evil,' mused Beer.—' I'm the last to blame 'em,' declared Woodman.= They'm too blown up as a nation, however,' added Beer. "Twas a very unhandsome thing to get in holds with us just when we had our hands full wi' Boney.'— ` I reckon these chaps had to do what they were told, like us,' declared Mark Bickford. They'm sailor men, so I hear, an' tis no use cussing 'em same as master do. They be only earning their living. A sailor have got to do what he'm bid, like any other warrior.'—' God's word ! but he makes my blood boil, no matter how cold the weather be—master, I mean. I wouldn't speak to a dog like he speaks to me. The manhood in me will blaze out some day,' declared Putt.—' Then you'll get turned off,' said Mr. Woodman.—' Tis very well for you; though Lord He knows how you can stand the mouth-speech you suffer from him in his rash moments,' retorted Putt.—' I stand it, like a donkey eats dachells : t I be built to. My family's always had a marvellous power of putting up with hard words from our betters. Not from smaller men, mind you, nor yet from our equals ; but what's simple impidence an' sauce not to be borne from the common sort, be just greatness of mind in the bettermost. They don't mean nothing. 'Tis only the haughty blood in 'em.'— "fis just their haughty blood that these here American chaps won't sit down under no more,' declared Mr. Beer. There's no bettermost among thorn, so I'm told. A man have got to work his way to the top. He can't be born up top; though how it answers to have no gentlefolks, I ban't witty enough to guess.' Malherb's great mastiff presently, by skill or accident, discovered the thing that these men sought. Beside Childe's desolated oenotaph the hound stopped, lifted up its head and bayed. Then it began to dig, and the terriers, yelping loudly, rushed to aid it. The men with their shovels made quick work, and the corpse of Jonathan Miller lay revealed. Neither physical agony nor mental grief clouded his features. His eyes were shut ; his countenance appeared placid under the gentle snow-slumber that had led him through the Valley of the Shadow. All perceived that they stood before one who had been their superior. Thomas Putt touched his hat to the corpse. Beer dragged a bottle from his pocket, then, appreciating the futility of troubling the dead, prepared to put it away again with a sorrowful oath. But Bickford pro- posed another course. He can't drink, poor hero, but us can. If you've brought brandy, gr me a drop, for I'm in a proper case for it. My feet be just conkerbils of ice beneath me.' Therefore they all drank, and Woodman spoke as his turn came for the bottle. 'Here's to the gen'kman,' said he, an' may he be out of trouble for evermore.'—' An' here's to his wife an' family,' added Beer, wiping the mouth of the bottle with his sleeve before he put it to his lips. You may be pretty sartain he's left a wife an' half a dozen, for men in new countries allus get a quiver full, according to the wonnerful wisdom of the Lord.' An' I'll drink to the sexton,' said Bickford, 'because the ground's froze two feet, an' the digging of this carpse's grave be going to fetch out a proper sweat on some man.'—' You take his honour's heels, will 'e, Woodman ? An' walk first. Me an' Putt will hold each a shoulder. You gather up the tools, Bickford, an' keep back they dogs. Look at thicky baggering hound ! He knows he've done a clever thing an' wants the world to know it.' So they returned and cast their features into a solemn mould at the direction of Richard Beer. Us can't be axed to feel no • The American Prisoner. By Eden Phillpotts. London: Methuen &Co. [Gs.) DacheUe : Thistles. more than the proper sorrow of man for man,' he exclaimed, 'but death's death ; an' it might be you or me as was going feet first an' shoulder high, but for the goodness of God an' us being Englishmen.'—' The poor soul's feet would make a merry-andrew sober,' said Woodman. What he's suffered only him and his Maker will ever know.'—' They'll be cured again afore his honour wants 'em,' answered Richard Beer. 'He'll rise so well as ever he was at the Trump, along with the best man amongst us!"
Enriched, though not overloaded, by admirable descriptive passages—the work of one who writes with his eye on the object—informed by local lore, and penetrated by a deep sense of the mystery and magic of the Moor which dominates and colours the whole narrative, the novel is, nevertheless, hampered
by the exigencies of a distinctly melodramatic plot, while its• balance is impaired by the conscientiousness of the author
in the use of his documentary and historical material. The
result has been a certain want of homogeneity similar to that observed in Mr. Quiller-Couch's Hefty Wesley. Thus, while
all the incidents relating to the life of the prisoners are, we understand, founded on fact, the dovetailing of this side of the story into that which relates to the fortunes of the imaginary house of Malherb has not been accomplished without prejudice to the verisimilitude of the whole. The character of Maurice Malherb, whose stubborn egotism is redeemed by bursts of generosity, is finely conceived ; so, too, is that of the terrible old miser and witch, Lovey Lee. But the melodramatic apparatus of the stolen heirloom—the wonderful glass amphora—and the mystery of John Lee's parentage involve the author in developments which accentuate the dis- parity we have alluded to above, the extravagance of the incidents being only partially redeemed by the picturesqueness of their setting. Again, while the characterisation is on the whole consistent and convincing enough, an excep- tion must be made in the case of the arch-villain. Mr.
Peter Northcot, the woolstapler, reminds us somewhat of the personage in one of the Bab Ballads who indemnified himself for a life of perfect virtue and integrity up to middle age by then perpetrating a fraud of the most gigantic dimensions. Here the sudden conversion of a bland and mealy-mouthed bore into a desperate assassin is far too abrupt to correspond to the facts of life. The heroine, again, displays a fickleness in the transference of her affections that alienates the sympathy of the chivalrous reader. There is so much fine material in the book that it seems ungracious to insist on the indiscretions in its arrangement. But Mr. Eden Phillpotts can only be judged by a high standard, and we hasten to add that with all its weaknesses, the book is intensely readable, and often delightful. In conclusion, we may note a curious slip which mars Mr. Phillpotts's otherwise generous portraiture of his American characters. No American drops his " h's," as is implied on p. 89. We have praised the eloquence and beauty of Mr. Phillpotts's word-painting, but
may be allowed to protest against his mannerism of employ- ing the form " shall " for " can " or "may "—e.g., " Aforetime some five-and-thirty ancient Forest Tenements were held as
customary freeholds, or copyholds, from the Manor of Lydforcl independent of the Duchy, and these venerable homesteads shall be found scattered in the most secluded and salubrious regions of the Moor "—and against an occasional pedantry of exactitude which makes him, for example, in describing the appearance of the witch, allude to the " ulnar c,ondyles at her wrists," or talk of a farm standing "stereobate deep in nettles."
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